In a flash stroke of serendipity, some of our table companions at dinner are a lovely Lesbian couple who also work for the insurance industry (one of the other Big Three), in claims (so they have money); they do a lot of cruising and also got married in California in October of 2008. They're a little older than us, and have been wonderful onboard friends. One is even a Trekkie, so the other understood when I said we were in fandom and met at a SF convention.Yesterday was a Day at Sea. Mom talked me into signing on for Boot Camp up in the gym. OMG. I'm so sore. This is a vacation? And I have three more classes.

And Mom has to keep us to this schedule of things on board; she's very hard to just let go and enjoy. She has to have activities planned, get there on time and don't miss things, whereas I look at the schedule, think, "I might like that" and if I miss it, so what? I might find something else to do. (And she Never Stops Talking.)

It was an elegant night; I squeezed into my new black spangley Mermaid dress (I definitely need to drop a few pounds; boot camp ho) and looked amazing anyway. Naturally enough, after two months and a week of pretending, my period started—maybe it's just being at elegant evenings on Carnival ships or something. At least this time it was a black dress and not a silver one.

Mom is yelling at her Kindle and determined she's going to take it back. I wish I knew how those books dropped off; if they hadn't, she would still be happy with it. I wish we'd had a day or two to get acclimatized to it before we left the WiFi connection.